1) Define – Like any other campaign, you need to first determine your goals. What do you want to achieve with your search engine optimization campaign? Don’t forget to write your goals down and share it with your team, so everyone is on the same page.

2) Analyze– Carefully analyze your competitors and industry. Face it: your competitors already analyze you, right? It all comes down to how your business stands out in the end. Consider the most common keywords related to your business and then type these keywords into Google. You will notice certain websites appear in the organic rankings (below the paid ads); these are the sites that you should closely study (focus on the top 20 sites). A helpful tool to use is the SEO Quake plugin (with Firefox), which shows each competitor’s site traffic.

3) Keywords– Spend significant time and effort researching your keyword list. It is best not to select broad keywords (example: “spa.”). You should select long tail relevant keywords, such as “spa in baltimore, md.” Additionally, make sure your keywords are located on your site. If the keywords aren’t on your site, then your search engine optimization campaign will definitely fail. If you already know of keywords that your site currently ranks for, keep these on your keyword list. You already have a head start with those keywords.

4) Site– You need to thoroughly examine your website for its content and configuration. For your landing pages, it is a good idea to use your product pages instead of your home page due to the diversity in keywords. Your home page probably has more general keywords that are tough to rank for organically. Each page within your website should have its own title tag as well. For your title tags, insert the relevant keywords to the left of the title for effectiveness. Another tag to focus on is the description tag, which describes a particular webpage in a short summary (150 characters). The description tag should be different from the title tag and include a call-to-action and a couple of keywords, too. Lastly, when you insert links on your site, use anchor text (example: “search engine optimization”) instead of “click here.”

5) Link Building– How do you increase backlinks (or links) to your site? Create distinctive content that is helpful to your audience. This could include “buying guides, tutorials, authorized comments on bright events of your niche, product reviews” (Moseva). Furthermore, I highly recommend using social sharing buttons so people will engage with your content. Search engines love highly valued information.

6) Review– Last but certainly not least, you need to actively review your search engine optimization campaign through Google Analytics. Google Analytics is an awesome tool to use for your online marketing campaigns, whether it be a paid search campaign or a search engine optimization campaign. With this tool, you can take a comprehensive look into your site’s traffic and more. It is similarly important to check your site’s rankings every week; some site ranking tools include SEO SERP and Rank Checker (for Firefox).

Does your company have a search engine optimization campaign? Do you use any of the guidelines mentioned above? Which guideline do you think is the most vital to your success?

About Alan Moore: Alan is an Internet Marketing Consultant with ReachLocal Baltimore. His mission is to help you increase your revenues and decrease unproductive advertising expenses through proven, online marketing strategies. He manages over $1.4 million in yearly marketing budgets and has worked with local businesses, agencies and the US government. Give him a call at (877)655-3438 to schedule a free consultation.